Liberty
Jayant Bhandari
June 28, 2018
Newton is a heart-wrenching story of the exploitation and abuse of tribal people by the Indian government and its armed forces. The story is set in a mineral-rich area influenced by the Naxals, a radical communist group, follower of Maoist ideology and considered a terrorist group by the Indian government.
The protagonist, Newton, is a good-hearted, honorable bureaucrat sent for election duty inside the Naxal-infested forest. It wasn’t he who was originally selected to go, although it was clear that others did not want the possibility of facing Naxals. The officer whose immediate replacement Newton was had claimed that he had heart problems and that the doctor had advised him against traveling by helicopter.
By law, no officer can refuse to go on election duty, except that — at least to an Indian audience — it was obvious that anyone who wanted to could readily provide a doctor’s certificate to avoid going. In India, it is so easy for a doctor to give you a certificate of sickness that many Indians living in the West extend their vacations in India and turn them into sick leaves. An Indian I once met when he was working for an airline in Sweden was challenged by his boss, who had seen a pattern. He sued the company for bigotry and got paid for “emotional damages†on top of his habitual paid vacations.
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http://libertyunbound.com/node/1865
